Jesus’ teaching in today’s Gospel tells us how serious a thing it is to offend against anyone in any way. Sin is always damaging, Jesus teaches us. Wrongdoing is never all right. Jesus speaks about a threefold way of sinning, with hand and foot and eye. These parts of our body are so precious and so vital in everything we do. His language is deliberately extreme, not meant to be interpreted in a literal fashion, for He is making the point that there are no half measures here. For example, different religious groups, different nationalities, difference of gender, none of these things should be an issue for us in the way we behave and treat one another. We are all human beings. What divides us, what has always divided us and always will divide us, unless we change our ways, is our inclination to sin and wrongdoing. It is then that we human beings create hell – a place where we have separated ourselves from God.

There are many places in this world that are truly a living hell. Wherever war breaks out, there is hell. Wherever persons persecute other people and make life hell for them, full of fear and threats and anger, such a place is a living Gehenna. Many people live in these conditions every day. God has nothing to do with sending people to hell. That is no part of Christian understanding. What we do understand is the ability of human beings to damn and to destroy; to destroy others and to damn themselves in the process. Jesus in His own life, would be a victim of this hellish behavior, when His opponents set out to destroy Him. Jesus knew what His suffering would be. That is why He had such a vivid realization if the seriousness of any kind of wrongdoing. Let us then rejoice in all good people everywhere, of any religion and of none. And let us remember that we, who are blessed to have faith in Christ Jesus, are called to follow His great example, and so be light to the world.

Today in the Gospel Jesus is telling His disciples about the kind of leadership He wants to see in His Church. But they seem deaf to what He says. He has told them already that His leadership will involve suffering and He will tell them a third time as they journey to Jerusalem. The disciples don’t understand why the Messiah should suffer and they are afraid to ask Him because it is a message they don’t want to hear. The conversation has been about who is the greatest among them, who wields the most power. Who is the top dog? Jesus knows His disciples are caught up in this desire for power, so He challenges them. Leadership in His Church must be based on service, so the one who wants to be first must be last. Jesus tells them they must learn to welcome not just the powerful but these insignificant children. If they do, they will be welcoming Jesus himself.

Jesus wants strong leadership for His Church. But He wants a leadership that does not dominate and insist on rank. It is a leadership that will inevitable come into conflict with alpha-male attitudes and, like Jesus, will have to suffer as it serves the weaker members of the community. In our parishes and homes, welcoming the “little children” will mean giving time for those who are sick, disabled, poor, mentally ill and vulnerable in all sorts of ways. In our competitive and often ruthless society, Christ is more likely to be found at the bottom of the social pile than at the top.

Today’s second reading suggests that discrimination between rich and poor people had even infiltrated the early Church. St. James invokes the Old Testament belief that God’s special care is given to poor people, choosing them to be “rich in faith” and “heirs to the kingdom which he promised to those who love him.” Jesus chose the life of a poor man; he had “nowhere to lay his head” and, in St. Paul’s words, “he became poor for your sake, to make you rich out of his poverty.” In His public ministry Jesus’ love embraced everyone, and He bridged the great divide between rich and poor people, not in a material way but through increasing their love and faith. The miracle in today’s Gospel, in which Jesus cures a man who is deaf and speaks with difficulty, can be seen not only as physical healing but also as a spiritual gift that brings the man to a deeper faith. St. Mark gives the incident a symbolic meaning: the man is taken apart from the crowd and receives the ability to hear and to speak of what he has heard and understood, whereas the disciples, though they were privileged to be constantly in the presence of Jesus, so often failed to understand what they had heard.

St. Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant but as a young man, after returning from war, he made a pilgrimage to Rome. There his heart was moved by the sight of the beggars. He exchanged clothes with one of their number and, discovering for himself the reality of poverty, he resolved to commit his life to prayer and to serve all who were poor. St. Francis was known as “Il Poverello”, the poor man. He embraced poverty in imitation of Christ and by his way of life increased love and faith, healing, the gap between rich and poor. It is by imitating Christ, as Francis did, that we too can bridge whatever divides us from each other.

Customs, traditional ways of doing things, are part and parcel of every society, including every religious community. They can be extremely useful, but over time can become pointless. In today’s first reading Moses commands the people to follow their God-given “laws and customs.” And in the Gospel the Pharisees and scribes complain to Jesus that His disciples are eating with unwashed hands, and so are not complying with the Law. They mean that the disciples are ignoring some of the prescriptions that the scribes and Pharisees had added to the Law over the centuries. These regulations were not concerned with health and safety but with ritual purity. Jesus is not suggesting that matters of ritual purity are of no value, but He does insist that there are other things of greater importance. With a quotation from the Prophet Isaiah, He claims that the Pharisees are hypocrites: they are actors, showmen, who offer lip service to the Lord while in fact their hearts are far from Him; their service is worthless. He explains that they should look, not to what goes into the stomach, but what emerges from the heart. It is the human heart that is the source of of uncleanness, of “evil intentions.”

Today’s readings prompt us to examine our attitude towards our own religious customs and practices. We too can become rigid and narrow; we can behave like the Pharisees of old. We can loath to accept any changes in what we’ve been used; even changes that have been approved by the Church, changes made because circumstances have changed or because former practices have been replaced by more helpful ones. Jesus ends the controversy in today’s Gospel by insisting that the heart is the source of “evil things;” but, by implication, it is also the source of good things. Jesus wants a heart that is humble, a heart that knows its own limitations, a heart that is ready to accept change when change is called for, a heart that is in fact like unto His own; He calls to be like Him, “gentle and humble in heart.”

Daily decisions are a part of life: how to dress, what to eat, when to go to bed. In these matters our decisions are constantly changing, but there are some decisions which by their nature should be permanent. An excellent example of which is the decision to marry. Marriage is a covenant, a permanent, loving relationship of fidelity in which a man and woman become one.

God invited His people of the Old Testament to become His partner in a covenant which was a spiritual form of marriage. Joshua had made his decision.

Centuries later Jesus confronted those who had heard Him preach. He challenged them to make a decision about Himself. But that they take it seriously is exactly what Jesus demanded. When His objectors turned their backs on Him to walk away, He let them go. It was the day of decision. Peter, in a protestation of loyalty which has been repeated down through the ages by men and women of faith, declared, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe; we are convinced that You are God’s holy one.” He had made a decision to bind himself so closely to Christ that, despite his late momentary lapse, he would be of one mind in faith with Christ. In effect he said that he wanted to enter into a permanent, loving relationship of fidelity with Christ.

We have the same grace which means we have the same challenge, the same decisions to make. Christ made faith in the Eucharist the ultimate test of faith in Himself. To embrace the Eucharist and to make the celebration of this sacrament the center and heart of our lives is to live out the permanent, loving relationship which makes Christ and ourselves two in one flesh.